Conservative cities and states across the country have taken to President Donald Trump’s deportation plans and are increasing cooperation with federal authorities — even seeking new laws against illegal immigration that would be enforced by local and state police.
Florida’s legislature held a special session last week and passed legislation creating a state-level immigration enforcement operation. Tennessee’s new law creates a similar office and makes it a felony for public officials to back sanctuary policies.
Iowa and Oklahoma passed state deportation laws that have been blocked by courts. Six Colorado counties are suing the state over its sanctuary policies, and Indiana is suing one of its counties over immigration enforcement.
The New Hampshire House overwhelmingly passed legislation that would prohibit sanctuary cities, though that bill has a competing version in the state Senate. And last week, Georgia’s Senate passed a bill that would allow local government employees and officials in sanctuary cities to be held civilly liable for any crimes committed by immigrants without permanent legal status.
In Louisiana, Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill last week filed a motion in U.S. District Court in New Orleans to force the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office to abandon its sanctuary approach.
Despite Trump’s pledge to deport millions of people living in the United States illegally, the key targets so far have been the roughly 750,000 people who already have open deportation orders signed by a judge, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank devoted to immigration policy.
Suburban Nassau County on Long Island, New York, is one locality planning closer cooperation with immigration authorities. The county voted Republican in last year’s presidential race for the first time since 1988.
The county has agreed to allow 10 detectives to help arrest wanted immigrants with criminal convictions and to hold them for up to 72 hours, in exchange for reimbursement from ICE, County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, said in a statement.
The partnership gives Nassau County more leeway to hold people on suspicion of immigration violations than it would have if it were acting independently, he wrote, because of state guidance questioning the legality of jailing someone after their release by a court.